Game of the Year: Men's Basketball 68, New Mexico 62

Ten minutes to tipoff: New Mexico and Harvard players begin layup lines. Fourteenth-seeded Harvard boasts no starter taller than 6’7”; third-seeded New Mexico starts four players that size.

Harvard entered its second-round NCAA tournament game against New Mexico as an 11-point underdog. The number two team in the country according to the Ratings Percentage Index, New Mexico was a popular pick to emerge from a weak West Region while Harvard’s squad was characterized more by what had happened off the court—the Government 1310 cheating scandal—than on it.

“Last year, we were expected to be in this position,” Crimson coach Tommy Amaker said before the game. “We were predicted to be the best team in our conference.… This year we had a different set of circumstances.”

17:57 left in the first half: After sophomore center Kenyatta Smith pulls down a rebound, freshman point guard Siyani Chambers takes the outlet pass and darts up the floor. He lays it up off the backboard amidst a swarm of Lobo defenders for the first points of the game. Harvard didn’t lose the lead the rest of the half.

Although only its second time on college basketball’s biggest stage, Harvard played like the more experienced team early on. New Mexico missed 11 of its first 12 attempts, including four straight missed threes, as the Crimson opened the game on a 9-2 run.

“They struggled with making their shots, and I’m sure they were incredibly frustrated with that,” Amaker said after the game. “But I like to think the way we locked in defensively…had something to do with it as well.”

At the center of it were Chambers and Smith, two players whose contributions had buoyed the Crimson entering the tournament. Chambers played nearly 38 minutes per game and facilitated the Harvard offense while Smith burst onto the scene late in the year, providing the Crimson with a defensive stalwart down low.

18:46 left in the second half: New Mexico junior combo guard Tony Snell—a probable NBA draft pick—sprints down the court and rises above smaller Harvard defenders to lay the ball in off the backboard to give the Lobos a one-point lead. New Mexico is on an 11-2 run and Snell has seven points after being held in check for the first half.

The Crimson’s season featured high peaks, but also deep lows. The team returned only one starter from last season and suffered several late-game heartbreaks in the non-conference schedule.

Harvard ran out to a 7-1 start in the Ivy League season entering the weekend trip to Princeton and Penn. A pair of losses to the Killer P’s dropped Harvard a half-game behind Princeton with three to play. After losing to Penn, the Crimson no longer controlled its own destiny.

“We weren’t perfect,” Amaker said before the UNM game. “We had our moments [this season] where we were in the depths of despair.”

But, like it had all season, Harvard bounced back. Victories over Cornell and Columbia, combined with two Princeton losses, in the season’s last weekend propelled Harvard to the NCAA tournament.

18:35 left in the second half: Running off a pick, co-captain Christian Webster takes a pass from Chambers, squares up to the hoop, and sinks a three to give the Crimson the lead. On the next possession, Rivard sinks a corner three. Harvard is up four.

The three was the great equalizer for Harvard, who started four guards most of the season. The team shot 39.8 percent from behind the arc, good for seventh in the nation. A rotating cast of hot shooters, led by Rivard and Webster—who took 85.4 percent of their shots from beyond the arc—compensated for struggles on the defensive end. Against the Lobos, the team shot 54.2 percent overall and sunk eight threes—five by Rivard.

2:18 left in the second half: With the Lobos down six, Snell misses a three from the corner. Kirk misses a put-back. Smith corrals the rebound and Amaker calls timeout. Out of the timeout, Chambers uses a screen from Smith and rolls to his left. Seeing that both Lobo defenders had dropped back, Chambers steps to the free throw line and lets loose a jumper. Nothing but net.

When the clock struck zero, the Crimson emerged victorious, 68-62, in the school’s first ever NCAA tournament victory. Despite 22 points and 12 rebounds from Kirk, Harvard had largely overcome a significant size disadvantage as the figurative and literal underdog. Williams and Snell combined to shoot five-for-18 from the field; sophomore Wesley Saunders outscored them, 18-17, on his own.

For a team that overcame adversity throughout the season, first in the form of departed seniors Curry and Casey and later in the form of Ian Hummer and the Princeton Tigers, sitting at the podium afterwards, Amaker summed up the win succinctly.

“This means the world to us,” Amaker said.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at davidfreed@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @CrimsonDPFreed.